Ladder

One of the questions asked in today’s Ask Jables 3 Questions was regarding updates to the Planetary Annihilation ladder

PRoeleert: will you guys do improvements to the ranking system in near future? Revise timeouts / let people see full rankings?

jables: we have designs for making it more robust, but i don’t think you’ll see it in the next few months, as the guy working on that is buried in other items currently 🙁

This led to a further discussion of the ladder and the best way to encourage play, a subject I have covered in some depth. A suggestion was made to increase the inactivity period from seven to fourteen days. Jables popped away, and by the time he returned it had been done through the power of Uber engineering magic.

So, enjoy a little more flexibility in your requirement to play on the ladder before you disappear.

If you want to participate in the daily jables question time then just pop in to PA Chat sometime between 17:00 and 20:00 UTC. PA Chat has been updated. Courtesy of mikeyh:

single listing in rooms for multiple logins (PA / PALOBBY, etc)

1v1 rank league images fade over time once you go inactive

web icon for people logged in outside of PA

revised help system:

shows only commands available to current user

specific help for PA vs PA Lobby

rank and web status in friends list

right click to clear red mention when minimised

improved command error messages

major refactor of internals

To Do:

(re)join buttons when room is closed (I still misspell halcyon at least once a week)

/setcolor and /resetcolors

/leftalign

show last ranked match info

uber session timeout handling

title bar command links when space available eg /help or /live

fix ghost tooltips when user list updates

enable friend requests when logged into PA Lobby

html help (maybe)

After some more testing the PA Chat code will be ready to split out of PA Stats into a separate client mod that will share identical code with PA Lobby.

Build 76766 has just been moved from PTE to live. Primarily focused on bugfixing and polish, it features some improvements to the AI and a faster and more responsive lobby list. Uber have advised that due to heavy demand they are spinning up additional servers, so if you encounter an issue starting a new lobby or joining a game please be patient and try again.

A key change is that you will be hidden from the ladder rankings if you haven’t played in the last seven days. You won’t lost your rating, you just won’t be visible to other players and will no longer show as having a rank. Once you play a game you will regain a rank on the ladder. For those of you returning to the ladder, or who want to give it a try, be sure to check out our guide to the Planetary Annihilation pyramid, a list of essential skills to master no matter your rank.

You may have seen tvinita in Twitch chat recently if you’ve been watching any player streams. He is the individual at Uber Entertainment responsible for balance, and he’s asking for your feedback on the changes to naval released as part of the previous patch. There’s more planned, so let him know your thoughts.

As ever, be sure to check PAMM for any updates to your mods following this patch.

Leaderboards

If player is inactive for 7 or more days, you will no longer show up on Leaderboards

Bugfix/Polish

Current game list should have improved responsiveness (changed games list to make use of compression to reduce bandwidth requirements).

Improved server browser behavior (sorting is now by time arrived instead of by game name)

Adjusted start position for Unit Cannon so it looks right

Umbrella adjusted for visual improvements

New icons for nuke and anti-nuke ammo to reflect current color scheme

Naval Umbrella redesigned to better match visuals of land version

Art pass for Holkins (land and naval)

New build bar icon for Holkins to match new look

Server backend perf tweaks

Improved support for non English alphabets in directory names

Improvements on path handling overall

Crash logging improvements

Fixed a bug on player surrender

AI fabbers will now try to avoid building where they are standing (should fix long delay for AI to start doing stuff at start of game)

Neural net data updated

AI will prioritize areas where a commander is present

Nav crash fix

AI fix for building too many fabbers

AI now anticipates upcoming economy income for area builds

AI should expand faster

AI will no longer believe Dox can attack while underwater

Minor changes on how AI prioritizes planets

Added stuck detection for AI platoons attempting to use a teleporter

AI now will use “Feeder Planets” when available to safely store units and feed them into more dangerous zones of battle

Layout polish on Kickstarter dialog

Recent contacts in chat list are now sortable

Opening new player guide when you are playing against AI will pause the game

Jables has announced that the ladder is being reset today, with a new build following shortly after. This build contains some small balance tweaks, a number of significant AI improvements, and the new system editor which allows for some pretty crazy planets.

General

You are now able to chat after games, even in chronocam mode

Added in backer names on more commanders in the Armory

More backer names are now in for planets and Galactic War credits

Nukes now have a specific effect if they happen in space

Jigs have a new custom explosion effect

Balance

Jigs now explode in a nuke sized explosion (drag select will space these to be safe, but you can hand place them closer if you feel lucky)

Change to Dox vision from 150 to 100

Commander torpedoes rate of fire reduced from 2.0 per second to 1.0 per second

Commander torpedoes range reduced from 200 to 160

Dox will now correctly fire on factories

Nuke damage will now expand out to match the effect

Ranked

Leaderboards are now online (found under Multiplayer off the main menu)

Players can watch the last replay of the top 10 of each rank in the Leaderboards

3 new custom made 1v1 planets for Ranked play, to replace the old pool

You can no longer pause in ranked games

Disconnecting in a ranked game now pauses it and gives the disconnected player 180 seconds to reconnect before they forfeit

Penalties are now handled better when a player leaves a ranked lobby

A player has 30 seconds to show up for a ranked lobby before the game is abandoned

A player disconnecting from a ranked lobby now immediately abandons the game (and applies a penalty to the abandoning player, like before)

Players are now notified when they have a match and are tabbed away (flashing icon and sound)

It appears that Uber are still deciding whether to reset the ladder ranks once this launches. We at eXodus eSports also hope this will see a change in the map pool to using both a wider variety of biomes and sizes, as well as ones much better balanced than those available currently.

Uber have released build 74484. There are new custom commanders, modded games are displayed by default, but most importantly, ranked 1v1 matchmaking is now in the game. There were some initial hiccups, but they’ve now been resolved so get online and start matchmaking. I’ll see you in bronze!

Bugfixes

Known issues

Rank updates can take a bit to update

There is no notification sound if you happened to be tabbed away when game is ready

Will be doing a pass on systems being used for 1v1

Game count is currently broken

Right now the update to your rank can be delayed. At the end of a game the rank you see is often the rank you started the game with and not your new rank. Even after you return to the main menu it might still show the old rank. This is something being worked on.

Update

74416-main has been pushed to PTE. It includes:

A number of additional server crash fixes

Update to localization tags that were showing up

Gaf system has been removed from 1v1 Matchmaking

Removed Game Count / Players in Game stats

Fix for building MEXs over MEXs

Added a re-queue button to the end of matches and make sure provisional ranking status shows up the first time you play as well

Demonstrating the internal build on his latest stream, Brad Nicholson gave us a sneak peek at Uber’s official matchmaking system. More importantly, he announced that it will be landing in PTE on Monday. No time was specified but expect something friendly to PST.

Hey guys, today is a big day! Team Genesis has been eager for some time now to share our latest set of competitive maps balanced for 1v1. It hasn’t been all smooth sailing, so we apologise for not being able to get them out to you any earlier. We know you’ve been putting up with the old unbalanced ladder maps for far too long!

Today we finally reached a point where we were happy enough with the quality of the maps to push the button. This update features a new 900 radius planet, larger than anything we’ve previously been comfortable to say was suitable for 1v1. So have a play on it and leave your feedback! This will be the last update to the 1v1 map pool – detailed changelog and map information below.

While the pa stats ladder will become unsupported in a few weeks due to Uber’s official ladders coming online, we’re still going to be working hard to support future community or exodus tournament events so your feedback still matters. If you feel we are missing certain important aspects of PA gameplay in our map sets, or if you think we could have done something better etc. we would love to hear what, why, and how.

Also want to leave a big thanks to Cola_Colin for creating PA Stats online and supporting the ladder for as long as he has. I doubt the competitive community would be anywhere as large or established if not because of him.

20/10/2014 – Pa Stats Ladder Map Changelog

Tug of war pathing issues fixed. Both edge spawn options have been changed to now have secondary paths around their respective lava ponds to minimise the effectiveness of contains from the middle spawns

Tug of War

Description: One straight landmass surrounded by lava. Two edge spawns and two middle spawns. Simple and straightforward to understand, with some opportunities to sneak around and flank your opponent from behind.

Station 3

Description: 3 land spawns and one naval spawn make for different gameplay each time. Land spawns operate in a triangle, with some secondary routes between spawns. You could also send special forces dox around through the water to attack from behind your opponents base.

Capital N

Description: Because the spawns are on opposite sides of the equator, this map tends to feel much larger than it actually is. Capital N plays slower and much more macro paced than your standard moon. Also has alot of interesting movement options and bridge chokepoints.

Spawn Count: 2

Faceoff

Description: This is the multi-planet spawn orbital version of Capital N. As per popular request, you can annihilaser race, compete for the 3rd halleyable moon to destroy your opponents laser controls, or just plain out invade from orbit and ignore the super weapons altogether.

Spawn Count: 2, 2, 0

Caledonia

Description: Earthlike planet with a lot of water and water metal. Some interesting land movement options as well if you want to ignore all that. All spawns are vulnerable to naval bombardment to some degree however.

You may remember that we previously wrote about Uber’s plans for ranked play, but they have now put out a video update to everyone to provide some further context to those plans. We meet Jables for the first time, and Brad uses the opportunity to show off his mighty mutton chops. What a beast.